Strange that clean/autoclean aren't in the man pages for apt.

It appears they are only mentioned with a reference to read apt-get man page.

edit-sources (work-in-progress)
           edit-sources lets you edit your sources.list(5) files in your
           preferred text editor while also providing basic sanity checks.

       showsrc, depends, rdepends, policy (summarised in apt-cache(8))

source, build-dep, download, changelog, clean, distclean, autoclean
       (summarised in apt-get(8))

Edit: that would be in excalibur it is not in a previous version of apt on a bookworm based install.

Strange that clean/autoclean aren't in the man pages for apt.

Yes.
Instead of editing the previous post, I posted again.
Makes more sense when you are following the thread.
Granted, I neglected to add Update at the beginning of the post the quote to myself.
Sorry about that ...

But I digress ...

Running apt clean or apt autoclean requires root or sudo.
Depending on how your system is configured.

# apt clean
# 

# apt autoclean
Reading package lists... Done
Building dependency tree... Done
Reading state information... Done
# 

Likewise, to run apt-get clean or apt-get autoclean also requires root or sudo.

# apt-get clean
# 
# apt-get autoclean
Reading package lists... Done
Building dependency tree... Done
Reading state information... Done
# 

With respect to apt-cache ...
You are quite right: clean and autoclean are not valid options.
What has happened is most probably a typo on behalf of one of our (most active) admins: fsmithred.

Strange ...
I have been a member of Dev1 for eight years now and it is the first time I see such a thing.
No big deal, just this week I have made more than a half dozen typos myself.
Happens.

So, no.
My guess is that you are not losing it, whatever it may be.
I keep my own it in a small box under the kitchen sink so it does not get lost. 8^°

Hope that clears up things for you.

Best,

A.

Am I losing it or has this thread gone off the rails?

Yes.

apt autoclean will remove obsolete packages but to clear the /var/cache/apt/archives and /var/cache/apt/archives/partial directories you have to use apt clean.

Just checked in my netbook's Chimaera system and I came across a dozen or so packages from over three years ago.

Makes sense.
They were there because I never use apt clean, just apt autoclean and apt autoremove.

Best,

A.

... Bleachbit do the heavy lifting ...

My favourite was fslint but it's now long gone on account of python 2.7.x being deprecated.

Best,

A.

Yes, I saw it.
I use apt autoclean and apt autoremove along with apt install -f all the time.

But I have read that they do not take care of what has accumulated in /var/cache/apt/archives and /var/cache/apt/archives/partial.
Sorry, cannot find the link ... 8^°

Thanks for your input.

Best,

A.

/var/anything and /usr/share/things are the worst offenders. One of these days I need to write a list.

Was passing by, had a read and tried it.
Had never used it before.

# uname -a
Linux devuan 6.1.0-34-amd64 #1 SMP PREEMPT_DYNAMIC Debian 6.1.135-1 (2025-04-25) x86_64 GNU/Linux
# 

# apt-cache autoclean
E: Invalid operation autoclean
#
# apt-cache clean
E: Invalid operation clean
# 

System is up to date.

What am I missing?

Thanks in advance.

Best,

A.

Thank you all for the help and explanations you gave me.
Dee.

You might run apt-cache autoclean to get rid of old deb packages in /var/cache/apt/archives or even apt-cache clean to get rid of all the deb packages in that directory.

I am not OP, but I have forgotten all about apt-cache... clearly, since I have 4253 pkgs as far back as 2015 in there taking up 13GB !
However, 'clean' and 'autoclean' are not valid operations for apt-cache. (apt 2.1.1devuan1). I'm on daedalus and am up to date. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

Edit: apt-get autoclean works. I'm down to 487 pkgs @ 6GB.

You might run apt-cache autoclean to get rid of old deb packages in /var/cache/apt/archives or even apt-cache clean to get rid of all the deb packages in that directory. Note that this will not uninstall any programs. It just remove the .deb packages, so if you needed to reinstall something, you'd need to pull it from the repository. (i.e. the way most people install packages most of the time.)